Originally posted by elfkin477 In your opinion, what happens after the end of 12 monkeys?

Did I miss something here? I thought it was pretty obvious that the guy goes to the cities that were mentioned earlier in the movie, spreads the virus, 5 billion people die, and the few that live go underground. Or was there something suggesting that multiple outcomes could have occured after he boarded the airplane?

Originally posted by elfkin477 In your opinion, what happens after the end of 12 monkeys?

Did I miss something here? I thought it was pretty obvious that the guy goes to the cities that were mentioned earlier in the movie, spreads the virus, 5 billion people die, and the few that live go underground. Or was there something suggesting that multiple outcomes could have occured after he boarded the airplane?

The ending is a little less than obvious. They guy is on the plane, but so are the future scientists. Presumably, this is NOT as it happened before.

I think that the movie allows for an open interpretation. Either the scientists outright STOP the virus. OR they get a specimen of the virus to take back to the future to make a syrum to save what's left of the planet.

Well, that's what I thought. Beacuase of the information he sent back (sent forth?) they knew who did it and sent a scientist back with their orginal goal of getting information to cure the people who were left.

This is still a depressing ending as it means A) the scientists are tragically short sighted (or possibly evilly self-serving?) in not trying to stop the epidemic or B) the Bruce Wills character was deluded to think he could have stopped it.

The future scientist never expressed any interest in trying to stop the plague. So- the plague spreads, 5 billion people ie, and the scientists in the future have more information.

The scientist was there as backup. If the original carrier failed, she would have spread the virus herself.

They were shown to be bastards from the very first scene, and there was no reason for anyone to trust anything they said to Cole. It was clear from what the woman said on the plane that she thought of people as insects and didn't care how many of them died.

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I don't see why the scientists would have sought to ensure the spread of the virus, RealityChuck. According to the original, "pure" timeline before the future scientists started sending people back, the virus got out there and spread anyway. So if they were pro-virus, they would have left things as they were.

So I see no reason to doubt their claim that they don't think history can be altered, and that they were only seeking a "pure" form of the virus to study to devise a cure in the future.

Of course, that doesn't make them good people; doubtless they wanted a vaccine or cure to serve their own interests.

If I have any criticism of the movie, it's that its fatalistic theme worked against telling a good story. I don't mind an unhappy ending, but I do like to be surprised by an ending. Since everything happened just like Cole's dream said it would, there was no surprise.

The virus has already been released to the security guy, who will presumably affect others as they board planes. However, COle himself says that he's not there to stop the virus, that he can't. The future seems fairly unchangable throughout the movie, though I'm certain that in Cole's dreams the virus spreader IS Brad Pitt.

Presumably the scientist gets a sample of the virus - that's what they claim they need from the beginning.

The scientist didn't come to be on the plane because of Cole's actions. They can't change anything. But she will now remember who she was sitting next to all those years ago, which will help in tracking down a pure sample.

I don't understand where all this confusion comes from. Yeah, sure the scientists are kind of jerks at times, but Cole is a criminal (probably) with poor impulse control. And when he does a good job, they're nice to him. I just watched it again this weekend, and I saw nothing to dispute the facts as they are told:

1) You can't change the past. It already happened. For example, little Jimmy sees the whole scene with the virologist and big Cole and Dr. Railly. That happened when he was a kid. Then, he grows up, goes back in time, and it happens the same way.

2) The scientists want a sample of the original virus, before it mutated. They can't stop the spread, but they can go back and get a sample. So, they use some undesirables to find out where it came from, and then send a scientist back to get infected with the original virus. She says she's in insurance. You know, for the survival of the human race, not insurance that the virus gets spread. It already did. You can't change it.

Everyone keeps saying that you can't change the past but what about that lecture that Dr. Railly gives about the "prophets" in WWI, etc.? She would've never been talking about that had they not been mucking around in the past. That's the only example of future changing I can think of right off hand but I'm pretty sure there's more.

Nobody changed the past, Cisco. She was able to give the lecture about the "prophets" because the men had been sent back in time. Things happened the way they happened, and that's why at the airport Cole couldn't act in a way that contradicted his memory.

Well, I have a question. If they did not believe you could change the future, why did they try to shoot (kill) the guy distributing the virus at the airport? If they needed samples wouldn't it be easier just to grab them from him after he de-planed, rather than running through the airport with a gun setting off detecters?
I took her remark, "I'm in insurance." to mean insurance against Cole's failing to kill him. She would do it. A back-up plan.

I thought it was very clear that the past could not be changed, and the scientists knew this, so their sole mission was to obtain a pure strain of the virus in order to
save what's left of the human race in their own time. At the end, Cole felt that he could change the past, but instead played out the same event that he witnessed as a child. This raises all sorts of questions about fate and freewill, while neatly dancing around the paradoxes that plague other time-travel movies (i.e. Terminator 2).

But what I *really* want to know is, what's up with that toothless guy? The one who kept calling Cole "Bob"? I can't figure that out to save my life.

What is very interesting about this film is that except for one short shot, it is entirely made up of stills. More like a diaporama than an actual motion picture. There is obviously no dialogue and the script linked above is the voice-over narration.

I saw it a few years before the 12 monkeys came out and I thought it was fascinating.

Originally posted by Jeremy's Evil Twin
But what I *really* want to know is, what's up with that toothless guy? The one who kept calling Cole "Bob"? I can't figure that out to save my life.

I don't believe there is any explanation for that other than it's Terry Gilliam's way of keeping you guessing. I think what struck me about the movie the first time I saw it is that throughout much of it you don't know what's real and what isn't. Cole could really be on this mission, or he could just be completely insane. I believe Gilliam used that toothless guy to further perpetuate this ambiguity. But I dunno. I'm interested on hearing what others think.

Originally posted by warmgun Well, I have a question. If they did not believe you could change the future, why did they try to shoot (kill) the guy distributing the virus at the airport? If they needed samples wouldn't it be easier just to grab them from him after he de-planed, rather than running through the airport with a gun setting off detecters?
I took her remark, "I'm in insurance." to mean insurance against Cole's failing to kill him. She would do it. A back-up plan.

That was pretty much my take on it, too. I was wondering if anyone else saw it that way...I figured that she was going to either kill the guy or crash the plane into the ocean.

Well, I'm not sure who the toothless guy is either, but let's at least take closer note of the fact that he's toothless. We're told several times in the movie that the future scientists track and retrieve their agents through their teeth, and when Cole decides to stay in the past he removes the necessary molars.

So whatever else the toothless guy is, he's a former time traveler. Maybe Cole resembles one of his own ancestors, named Bob, who the toothless guy knows and who he mistakes Cole for.

Originally posted by warmgun Well, I have a question. If they did not believe you could change the future, why did they try to shoot (kill) the guy distributing the virus at the airport? If they needed samples wouldn't it be easier just to grab them from him after he de-planed, rather than running through the airport with a gun setting off detecters?

That puzzled me as well. After saying again and again that they can't really change the past, why try to kill the guy at all? What's the point? My best guess is that they weren't completely sure that the past really couldn't be changed, and figured it was worth a shot.

Oh they all try to change the past. And it would make no difference if they didn't try to change it. It's just that their efforts to change the past are already included in the past. The past and the future are quite bound together. A future person going back can "do" things, seemingly making decisions along the way, but their influence must already be part of the future's history. All the time travellers can influence is by way of memories brought back. The scientist cannot stop the virus, but she can discover where a pure sample might be found (or discover that she already knows, but did not realise the significance of her memories). She might try to stop it, but that would just contribute to the way it already was/ would be released.

The time travel does nothing more than uncover the significance of memories and records. This was particularly nicely done in the scene where Stowe makes the 'phone call that set them onto the track of the Army of the 12 Monkeys in the first place. Willis' interaction with her - which required him having been sent back - led to this call, which led to him being sent back. Neat and consistent (but really bad news for free will). The only slightly clunky bit is the gradual decoding of new material.

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Originally posted by hawthorne Oh they all try to change the past. And it would make no difference if they didn't try to change it. It's just that their efforts to change the past are already included in the past. The past and the future are quite bound together. A future person going back can "do" things, seemingly making decisions along the way, but their influence must already be part of the future's history. All the time travellers can influence is by way of memories brought back. The scientist cannot stop the virus, but she can discover where a pure sample might be found (or discover that she already knows, but did not realise the significance of her memories). She might try to stop it, but that would just contribute to the way it already was/ would be released.

Wow,hawthorne, thanks. That's all cleared up. Oh, one more thing...got a cite for that?
Since no one has gone back in time (that we know of), wheather one could or couldn't change the future is open to debate. As Jeremy's Evil Twin pointed out it's a common problem for TT movies (one of my fave's: Time Rider).
And no, JET , IIRC that was not Cole's decision to shoot the guy. He had already been convinced by Dr. Railly he was from the future and was following orders.

Originally posted by Fiver A cite, warmgun? Watch the movie; there's your cite. Watch carefully and pay attention and I think you must conclude the movie is saying exactly what hawthorne wrote.

Well I guess it depends on wheather hawthorne mean't within the context of that particular movie or TT in general. Regardless, as pointed out, there is that fatal flaw in time-travel movies which I will spell out now rather than allude to. To wit: there would be an infinite number of 'Cole's (for example) at the airport because everytime he went back he would see the previous number of himself. The movie just happens to take place the first time he went back. In otherwords, the first time he goes back, he sees (or if he doesn't - we do) himself as a little boy. If "The past and the future are quite bound together" and the past cannot be changed, as hawthorne suggests, then the little (young) Cole will grow up again, go back in time again, and see himself as a boy again - and see himself as an adult (shooting [and dying]) at the airport from coming back the first time again. Since this will repeat ad nauseum there would be an infinite number of Coles at the airport. Since there's not, we could conclude that the past is changable.

Time travel (TT) is not possible, but not for the reasons stated.above It has nothing to do with infinite regression or airports filled with innumerable Coles.

It's because time doesn't exist.

HOWEVER, followng (Everest?) multi-universe interpretation of quantum bifurcation, it may be possible to travel to a near-by parallel universe at a 'prior' moment, and alter its course with impunity. These apparent paradoxes disolve when you realize that they are not saving their own world, but only a neighboring world.

It's not ideal, but better to save the universe next door than save no universe at all.

Ok, who let DR. Pinky out of GQ?
Methinks, good doctor, you are picking nits. Whatever your very strict definition of 'time' may be, I think we here are talking 'movie' physics.
I could go on at length explaining why real time travel ('backwards') is not possible - but you know that already.
However, time, in a very real sense does exist. Yesterday, tomorrow. 5 minutes ago, 5 minutes from now. The age of the earth. The age of the universe.
Even, the 'Special Theory of Relativity' provides for twins to age (in a given time) at different rates( 'time' happening differently for each twin).
It's simply a frame of reference and a covenient yardstick to measure our human life-spans against.
In the context of the movie, it has everything to do with infinite regression.

...everytime he went back he would see the previous number of himself. The movie just happens to take place the first time he went back. In otherwords, the...

I don't know why you think it would be that way.

(Note that all these musings are about the movie; I don't think time travel is possible in real life.)

If the past is immutable, then clearly Cole only went to the airport as an adult once. There were two of himselves there: the man who was killed, and the boy who saw the man killed and later remembered the event as a dream.

So the timeline of Cole's life is like a length of rope that loops. No infinite regression required. No multiple Coles.

...everytime he went back he would see the previous number of himself. The movie just happens to take place the first time he went back. In otherwords, the...

I don't know why you think it would be that way.

(Note that all these musings are about the movie; I don't think time travel is possible in real life.)

If the past is immutable, then clearly Cole only went to the airport as an adult once. There were two of himselves there: the man who was killed, and the boy who saw the man killed and later remembered the event as a dream.

So the timeline of Cole's life is like a length of rope that loops. No infinite regression required. No multiple Coles.

Point taken (well, actually like a piece of rope shaped like the number 6 - he was about 10 or so before it started looping ).
But that could mean that life goes no farther than (adult) Coles dying (Unless Cole's life is divergent [ha ha] from the space-time continuem), if that is the case, the pure virus won't do them any good anyway. And they should know that. The same way they should know that the shooting at the airport is futile.
If the past is 'mutable' , then there's no reason that there can't be an infinite regression of Coles.
But I must toss out this diclaimer; It's been a while since I've seen it and I wasn't thinking, "what happens next?" when I was watching it 'cause I thought the woman on the plane killed the distributer (remember she is the same age in the future and the past) and the whole thing was (mostly) avoided. My reasoning: Before the scientist knew how it was started, they might have thought some major outbreak occured naturally and assumed there was no way to stop it. But after they discovered it was just one guy, they realized they could (almost) stop it.
This is my swiss-cheese theory so far.
I'll dig it out and get back to you. There's some dialog at the airport I'm kinda fuzzy on.
In the mean time, Fiver, did you see "Time Rider' (Peter Coyote, Fred Ward)? It's a fun romp through time - I'd be curious to hear your take on it's ending.

I once posted four different possible explanations for what happened in 12 Monkeys. I'll skip the ones that have already been raised here and mention one that hasn't.

Cole really was insane.

There is, after all, support for this. He behaves in ways that are inarguably irrational. He hears voices. He questions his own sanity on a number of occasions (including at one point trying to convince himself that the future world is an illusion in his mind). The man in the mental hospital tells Cole that half the time he believes he's living in a science fictional world; this conversation might be a clue that Cole is doing the same.

As someone noted, in one version of Cole's dreams he had incorporated Goines, a person he met in real life, into his dream. He also told Kathryn Railly that since he met her he now recognizes her as the woman in his dreams. This could imply that his dreams are not memories as they appear to be on the surface, but just normal dreams which are changing as Cole incorporates people and events from his life into them. In which case, the appearance of the "scientist" on the plane is proof of this. She's not a scientist as Cole imagined her to be in his fantasy world, she's an insurance agent he saw in the airport.

Now granted, there are holes in this theory. But there are holes in any of the explanations that have been offered since this movie came out. So treat this as another possibility and a new way to look at the film.

You may be on to something there, Little Nemo. Whatever else is true about Gilliam as a director, he always likes to fuck with our minds. And the same sort of "is he crazy or is this all real?" disconnect was running through his other films Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King.

Gilliam doesn't so much fuck with you as ask questions. Is the end to Brazil optimistic? Sure, the guy's being tortured, but he's free in his mind. What is Gilliam saying here - that totalitarianism can never triumph if we are free to dream or our apparent freedoms are pathetic fantasies against a brutal world? I don't think he demands the viewer to draw a conclusion about these things. I'm not sure he has.

I think movies like this and Memento fuck with the viewer, bringing them in or pushing them out, instead of letting them be a passive sedentary cow with flashing lights in front of their eyes.

Second, besides the various levels of mind-fucks, there is a level of believability that increases when you think about the fact that each character comes bound with their own limitations of information at any one point (examples being Cole's dreams or the anxious investigation of the scientists).

I don't believe the past is changed or can be changed (Grandfather Paradox) at any time in the movie, so events that take place have always taken place, cyclically. 5 billion people have to die, Cole has to die, and if events are changed, as someone pointed out, you can save a neighboring reality (or be stuck in a repeating loop, a la Dark Tower)

The fact that the security guard was snooping to me means he was exposed, (David Morse) was exposed, and therefore the female scientist as well. She may in fact be the guinea pig that carries an original germ back in herself (technically making her nowhere near the coldhearted bitch we presume her to be during the rest of the movie) hoping that the scientists can save her when she is pulled into the future with a pre-mutation virus in her.

As for Cole, Jose, and the gun... Why?
One thing that is easy to overlook is that since the scientists know the path, and grow ever closer to completing the whole trail to the source, they have access to newspaper clippings (shown in one scene) and would know that Cole (or an unidentified man, since no one with records would expect James Cole to be forty something in 1995) was killed, and Railly (identifiable) was arrested in the airport, with a decent amount of news coverage about it.
They know that changing the past could be destructive/paradoxical, so they send Jose back with a gun (that will be in phoos) that looks just like one that they possess, and "insure" that the whole thing goes down just as it always did (circular, not infinite)

I always took it as they were trying to alter the past anyway. But iteratively.

It seemed logical given that Willis is back there, and part of the past, so it has been altered.

But as the ending, they were trying to ultimately stop the virus and they would have, if it was not released in the airport. The other scientist can then go forward with the knowledge of who created it, and when it was released, and send back someone to kill him.

Sure, Willis could be insane. Yes, they say they can't alter the past, but clearly they already have.

I don't see their future as something they want to preserve, being lords of a world of shit is no substitute for being a nobody breathing fresh air in a normal world. I think people tend to confuse the people of the future with the malevolent authorities in Brazil, which shares a Gilliams visual touches of them. While self serving, their motives are also shared with the rest of humanity...

Welcome, phillionayers. Because this thread is several years old, many of the original participants may be gone, and several of the people who wander in now may tease you about reviving an old thread. Chewing over a movie like this never gets old, though, in my view, and it's a mark of how well-crafted the movie is that it can inspire this kind of analysis.

I think Gilliam was being purposefully ambiguous; there was just enough evidence to support any one of several theories as to what was really going on. There is no single, indisputably right answer. My own take is that the plague will still spread, since the security guard released it in the airport, but now the woman on the plane who's "in insurance" will be able to take some of the pure strain back to the future (ahem), and thus ensure that humanity will endure.

There is no single, indisputably right answer. My own take is that the plague will still spread, since the security guard released it in the airport, but now the woman on the plane who's "in insurance" will be able to take some of the pure strain back to the future (ahem), and thus ensure that humanity will endure.

Plus, isn't that pretty much what our hero flatly says, word-for-word? (Sure, he slips in a sexist assumption, but leave that aside for the moment.)

"This already happened. I can't save you; nobody can. I am simply trying to gather information to help the people in the present trace the path of the virus ... That's my mission. I just have to locate them, because they have the virus in its pure form, before it mutates. When I locate them, they'll send a scientist back here; that scientist will study the virus, and then, when he goes back to the present, he and the rest of the scientists will make a cure."

I always took it as they were trying to alter the past anyway. But iteratively.

It seemed logical given that Willis is back there, and part of the past, so it has been altered.

But it's not altered - it's the only way it ever happened. The scientists send Cole and the others back because they always did. Cole was always in the WWI photo, but it was only on his entering the 1990s that the significance was determined.

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But as the ending, they were trying to ultimately stop the virus and they would have, if it was not released in the airport. The other scientist can then go forward with the knowledge of who created it, and when it was released, and send back someone to kill him.

But why would they want to stop it? They've got their nice little technocracy which they have no desire to get rid of. With a cure, they can reestablish a surface society with the scientists in their rightful place.

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I don't see their future as something they want to preserve, being lords of a world of shit is no substitute for being a nobody breathing fresh air in a normal world.

The virus has already been released to the security guy, who will presumably affect others as they board planes.

I hadn't thought about this before, but nobody from the future apparently observed the release at the security checkpoint, so does the scientist on the plane even realize she is being exposed to the virus? Is she going to steal a vial and then return to the future not knowing the virus was already released and she is infected? Is she going to unwittingly wipe out the future survivors by spreading the infection to them when she returns?

Two 12 Monkeys zombies in a week. Someone is trying to tell us something!

My take has always been what Mr. President said in #46, yes the scientists are truly interested in finding a cure for the plague that is keeping their little pocket of humanity stuck underground, but they surely don't seem to be looking for the cure out of any altruism.